Bulldozer

AMD already gave us a good amount of detail on Bulldozer earlier this year. We’ll start with a quick refresher.

With Nehalem, Intel moved to a more modular design process that would allow it the ability to quickly configure different versions of the chip to hit various markets. With Bulldozer, AMD is doing the same.

The basic building block is the Bulldozer module. AMD calls this a dual-core module because it has two independent integer cores and a single shared floating point core that can service instructions from two independent threads. The two thread machine is larger than a single core but smaller than two cores with straight duplication of resources.

All else being the same, it should give you more threaded performance than a single SMT (Hyper Threaded) core but less than two dedicated cores. The savings are obviously on the die side. AMD tells us that the second integer core increases the Bulldozer module die by around 12%, despite significantly increasing performance in threaded integer applications.

Processors may implement anywhere from one to four Bulldozer modules and will be referred to as 2 to 8 core CPUs. Each core appears to the OS as a logical processor similar to what you get with Hyper Threading. A CPU with four Bulldozer modules would appear as an 8-threaded processor under Task Manager in Windows.

AMD argues that the Bulldozer module is ideal provisioning of hardware. With SMT (Hyper Threading) you force too much into a single core, while with traditional multicore you often waste hardware as any idle resources are duplicated across the chip.

Bulldozer CPUs will be AMD’s first 32nm processors manufactured at GlobalFoundries.

The new details today are about everything inside of the Bulldozer module.

"In many ways the architecture looks to be on-par with what Intel has done with Nehalem/Westmere."

I truly hope that this does not end up to be how things roll out. It has been far too long since we have seen good competition throughout the range of consumer CPU lineup. Currently we have options and competition in the mid-low end giving us exceptional bang for our buck. While one would never say you can get the best bang for your buck in the mid or high end everyone can still appreciate having options as well as getting value.Reply

I'm wondering: what about AMD powered notebooks? And I don't mean netbooks or CULV notebooks. Looks like bulldozer won't come to notebooks until 2012, which would mean that AMD would most likely have to compete with Intel's 22nm Sandy Bridge successor, Ivy Bridge. Reply

I can see Bobcat scaling upward in notebooks. It's multi-core capable, and is a fully-functional CPU. A quad core Bobcat with better-than-Intel graphics should be a very fulfilling product for notebooks in the mid-range, while providing good battery life (thank you, power gating). Anything above that could be handled by low-voltage Bulldozers as a premium offering. To me, that seems like a better solution than Intel's, where the Atom to Core increase is so severe.Reply

--------The x87, MMX, and 3DNow! instruction sets are deprecated in 64-bit modes. The instructions sets are still present for backward compatibility for 32-bit mode; however, to avoid compatibility issues in the future, their use in current and future projects is discouraged.--------http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee418798%2...

Why on Earth should AMD build in 2 special MMX pipes in a brand new µarchitecture ?

AMD just announced that they got rid of 3Dnow!, MMX pipes make no sense at all.